Let The ESPN Freakout Begin

Back in August, we wrote that the forthcoming ESPN book, Those Guys Have All The Fun, will make many ESPN employees crap their pants. Well, here comes the onslaught: The book's publisher has lifted the embargo on releasing details from the book. You'll certainly hear more about the "rowdiest frathouse in sports TV" in the next few days, but this is what we have so far:

"A lot of drugs ... quite a bit of screwing" | John Skipper, ESPN's executive vice president of everything, said yesterday: "I can tell you categorically, we do not have a frat-boy culture." Which doesn't quite match up with the words of ESPN's former general counsel: "The company would have Christmas parties up at some horrible place in Bristol. A couple of them were drunken orgies…. It became like a big frat party. There were a lot of drugs being done in the bathroom." And prostitution in an ESPN-owned apartment, too. READ »

"I've never seen anybody do SportsCenter as well as Olbermann. Nobody." | Keith Olbermann was the best, but he was also the worst. He once estimated that he deserved an 887 percent raise. "Everything he did was personal. And that was what made him great," Dan Patrick said. Said Suzy Kolber: "He made a lot of people unhappy around him. I'm sure he made me unhappy." READ »

Those guys have all the fur | An excerpt excised from the book tells us of a disgusting pastime, "rug racing," from Bristol's glory days. More hookers abound, naturally. Some of the inveterate rug racers still work for the Worldwide Leader, though, like so many others at ESPN, they'll get some weird looks in the hallways should their names leak out. READ »